Don't go into the light, Carol Anne

If you're up to date in your Lab Reports, you'll know that we have been bombarding a bottle of Pacific Rim Dry Riesling with Ultraviolet radiation in hopes of recreating the "lightstrike" wine fault under laboratory conditions (the original FINDING FAULT Lab post is here).

We subjected the bottle to 10-12 hours of UV-light each day over a six day period.

Now there's an argument to be made that we'd have been better off irradiating our wine in a tanning bed. As it may be that radiation in the UVA/B spectrum is more effective in this regard.

But we're a scientific lab, not a tanning salon. So we went with what we had, namely, a SterilGARD III ADVANCE class II Biological Safety Cabinet.

Lightstrike occurs through a reductive process which creates a number of sulfuric compounds, among them something called thiols. Thiols are the same chemical component used to give natural gas it's rank smell. They make old beer taste skunky. They actually make actual skunks smell skunky. Trying to get them into your wine is clearly ill-advised.

So we held our noses (figuratively; wouldn't be much of a test if we'd actually held our noses) and blindly tasted our thiol-thick wine against one not similarly abused.

It wasn't easy to tell the good from the bad. The wine from the sterilization tank had a strong odor of rubber bands, and a burnt rubber taste apparent on the palate as well.

When not abused the Pacific Rim Riesling is a competent, if somewhat boring, expression of the grape. (I believe we already mentioned it's a "great value"). A nose of mandarin orange and citrus zest with hints of honey and straw. A straightforward palate of pear (sweet) and lime (acid).

Someone did note the irony that the goût de lumière was slightly phenolic. And so could almost pass as goût de pétrole in a Riesling. We've asked the Baker company to alert us if they have an upswing of sales of SterilGARD cabinets in the Mosel river valley.

Goût de lumière

The "taste of light." Sounds sexy doesn't it? Like a gift from the fairies. Or a something you eat on the way to Nirvana. But goût de lumière -- lightstrike in English -- is actually a fault that makes tainted wine taste like rancid rubber bands or damp sheep.

Amongst the flaws in our FINDING FAULT series, we voted LIGHTSTRIKE as the flaw with the best name (see THIS NOTE on voting at the Lab).

According to wikipedia:

Lightstruck wines are those that have had excessive exposure to ultraviolet light... Very delicate wines, such as Champagnes, are generally worst affected, with the fault causing a wet cardboard or wet wool type flavor and aroma... The fault explains why wines are generally bottled in colored glass, which blocks the ultraviolet light, and why wine should be stored in dark environments.

Good to know why wine bottles are green. But what does lightstrike really taste like?

At the Lab, we are determined to find out. So we jammed a bottle of Pacific Rim, NV, Dry Riesling into a SterilGARD III ADVANCE class II Biological Safety Cabinet (manufactured by the Baker Company) that we use to sterilize instruments. We plan to bombard the bottle with a massive dose of ultraviolet radiation (254nm/UVC), and then taste it blind against a bottle stored carefully in our cellar.

No doubt, several questions come quickly to mind. First of which must surely be: Who makes non-vintage Riesling?

Randall Grahm is who. Grahm is the eccentric genius of Bonny Doon Vineyard. He has scaled back his business significantly to focus on the production of single-vineyard wines driven by our old friend the magic mud. Which means this non-vintage Riesling is a vineyard by-product. Whether or not this is left-over juice is pure speculation on my part, but I do know that this wine is made from grapes grown in Washington state and then blended with additional wine sourced from the Mosel region in Germany. You can buy it at Trader Joe's for $9.

What? It's not like we were going to irradiate something expensive.

You won't want to miss the results. Stay tuned...



(girl with wings: © George Mayer | Dreamstime.com )

Finding Fault 1.2: The History of Heat

You may remember that yesterday, the Lab tasted two bottles of inexpensive red table wine. One had been cooked inside a hot car until the cork had almost pushed itself out of the bottle. The other was stored in a wine fridge set at 55°.

I tasted these two again today. There was little difference. The cooked one was still better, although the other had benefited marginally from some time in the air.

Should we take from this that some exposure to heat might be good for young wine? Just enough to hasten the aging process without oxidizing the bottle into vinegar? Good questions.

I am, by training, a historian. I even almost finished my Ph.D. Some of my fascinatingly esoteric work on the semiotics of liberty is actually available online. You are no doubt wondering, why am I delving into my curriculum vitae? Because when in doubt, I go to my roots.

And my roots are research (mostly on wikipedia), and they yielded some interesting results.

The first is related to the myth of the ideal temperature of 55° (which is 13° Celsius). This guy, who apparently managed to finish his Ph.D., surmises that, "the 13°C temperature makes historical sense since wine storage in France is typically in caves and the natural underground temperature is around 13°C." In other words, not science of the sort we run here at the Lab, but tradition and history are the primary drivers behind 55°.

The second tid-bit (a technical term for historians) is related to Madeira, a fortified wine that was a favorite of both pirates and early Americans. This strange elixir was crafted on Madeira, a Portuguese island off the North African coast. The English King exempted the eponymous brew from the Navigation Acts of 1651 which limited American imports to mostly British goods. Since you probably can't name a decent English wine, Madeira was available without real competition in Colonial America, and so became a wildly popular way to get drunk. As a still wine, Madeira wasn't very good by most accounts. But when a cask was dosed with brandy as a preservative and sailed through the Tropics, Madeira evolved into something special. In fact, Madeira was not considered fully matured until it had made a voyage, preferably two, around the world. Eventually, the Madierianese (made that up, don't know what folks from Madeira are really called) figured out that heat and oxygenation were the key factors involved, and cleverly devised a way to heat and stir their product in a sort of wine-making greenhouse called an estufa. And thereby saved a lot on travel expense.

So clearly, heat can be beneficial in the right circumstances. Without further research, the Lab feels it would be irresponsible to make formal recommendations based on this single, idiosyncratic study. But if you find yourself with an extra bottle of inexpensive, not-great, too green wine, maybe take it for a drive in the sun, give it a little heat. Couldn't hurt.

(image: © James Steidl | Dreamstime.com)

Finding Fault #1: Cooked?

It's generally agreed that wine should be stored between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps not coincidentally, if you dug a deep hole in your backyard, this is the same temperature you would likely find at the bottom of it. It's why we put wine in cellars.

Deep in the cool ground is one thing. Excessive exposure to heat is another altogether. According to wikipedia, my new source for everything, "Wines that are stored at temperatures greatly higher than [55 degrees] will experience an increased aging rate." We call this "cooked." Cooked wines can oxidize, lose taste, color and aroma. We call this "flattening."

It is also the most widespread and common fault in wine (again according to wikipedia). So we at the Lab, decided to "cook" a bottle to see what happens.

We started with two bottles of identical wine. Something called Sustainable Red from Parducci (2005) that I bought at Whole Foods for $10/ea (which means you can probably find it for $6 somewhere else). The folks at the Mendocino Wine Co who own Parducci are pretty smug about their greenness, they claim to be the first carbon-neutral winery. As I drive a Prius hybrid, I'm happy to be working with them.

It was in the mid-80s in LA yesterday, hotter still inside my car which I intentionally parked in the sun, leaving one of the Sustainables inside. The other, I put in my 55 degree wine fridge. After 90 minutes, the cork on the bottle had actually burst through the seal. That's an undoctored photo of the unadulterated pushed-cork to the right. I think if I'd let it go another 30 minutes, I would've spent the afternoon looking for seat covers.

After the exposure, I put both bottles in the fridge. The real fridge, not the wine one. And let them both get cold. An hour before opening, I took them out of the fridge to warm back up to something closer to room temperature. I opened both bottles and let them breath in the bottle for 30 minutes. I marked one of the bottles with a black dot, and put a rubber band on the stem of a wine glass. I then asked my wife to pour a glass from each bottle, and make a note of which bottle went into which glass. As I had failed to tell her that I spent my day driving around with an inexpensive bottle of red wine riding shotgun, she had no idea what we were doing. This way, we both managed to taste "blind."

Up first, no rubber band: Jammy notes on the nose with some pleasant oakiness. Ripe plum and bright red fruits. A drying, tannin finish with an interesting, almost chalky texture on the tongue. My wife loved this. And I thought it was pretty good.

Rubber band was next: Herbaceous nose, green cedar and something astringent. In the mouth, pretty indifferent, uncomplex stuff. But the finish was exceptionally bitter. Actually made my wife gag a little.

My wife looked at me crossly, and held up the offensive glass. "What did you do to this?" I told her I cooked it. Showed her the pictures. She nodded at me in the motherly, patronizing way that I've seen her use with the kids when they do things like jam frozen peas up their nose.

"So which one had the black dot?" I asked. She turned over the card where she had written her key, and made a face.

We were both VERY shocked to discover the wine we both preferred had been my motoring partner. The bitter wine that made my wife choke was, it turns out, the one from the pristine conditions of the cellar.

Conclusions? First, I'd say the experiment isn't over. I'm putting both bottles back in the fridge and plan to taste them -- again blind -- tomorrow. Second, it may be that "an increased aging rate" is a good thing for an inexpensive, young-to-the-point-of-green, wine to endure. I'm not advocating that you leave cheap wine in the sun. Then again, if you only paid $4.99 for it. Why not?

Finding Fault

Cork taint, brett, cooked, lightstruck, there's a lot of things that can go wrong with wine. Ladybugs in the vines sometimes get pressed with the grapes, and this can make the wine taste like rancid peanut butter or cat pee. Too much time on the lees (the leaves, stems and skins which are often left in contact with the grape juice as a normal part of wine-making) can produce mercaptans. Mercaptans are what the gas company adds to natural gas so it stinks. Good for avoiding blowing yourself up; not good for wine. Wine is a living thing, breathing and evolving. That's part of the beauty of it. And, unfortunately, flaws are sometimes part of the process.

Some "flaws" are even desirable. Brettanomyces, for instance, often called "brett" by wine geeks, is a strain of yeast that can make wine taste like band-aids. But at lower-levels, it can impart an aged character to a young wine; some think it adds depth and complexity. I recently had a bottle of red that someone noted smelled of equine urine; very scientifically described, I thought. With equal biological precision, I said, "Yeah, cool, huh?" I now realize we were wankering around about a bottle of badly brett tainted wine. I've had another equally piss-y bottle from the same producer. Brett seems to be their thing. It's possible they're encouraging the flaw on purpose. More likely, they're too cheap to buy new barrels. Brett thrives in the oak used to age wine before bottling.

And then there's the all-inclusive category for flawed wine: "corked." Which I've always thought sounds appropriately like what you'd really like to say (hint: starts with an "f"). Sometimes "corked" actually means "corked," meaning contaminated with TCA, a mold that grows on cork treated with chlorine bleach. But more often "corked" means oxidized, or cooked, or f----ed up in other ways you're not quite sure about and would need an advanced degree in organic chemistry to understand.

For me, there's nothing worse than ordering a nice red at a restaurant, tasting it and then wondering, "Is this off?" And is it? If some wine-makers encourage flaws as part of their artistry, what counts as "off?" TCA is detectable at levels around 9 parts per trillion, which is, by definition, next to nothing. And we all have different thresholds for detection. I may sense it at 9, but you may need 11 parts to notice. So we sit there, eye-corking the sommelier, drinking wine that smells like wet newspaper.

Clearly, this is a category that calls for rigorous investigation. Or would be if (again!) I had bothered to get that advanced degree in chemistry. But there are a few experiments worth conducting that fall within the competencies of the Lab.

I happen to have one underway now. Results later in the week.

(image credit: © Andre Nantel | Dreamstime.com)